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after her. The shell-cave was a familiar place. He d scuttled in there many
times when they d been caught outdoors in one of the violent electric storms
which came down through the mountains from the north or when the ground began
to shudder in an earthquake s first rumbling. With the massive curved shell
above him and the equally massive flat shell below, the angle formed by the
cool, leathery wall which was the side of Sam s neck and the front of his
shoulder seemed like the safest place in the world to be on such occasions.
The undershell tilted and swayed beneath Ilf now as the mossback started
forward. He squirmed around and looked out through the opening between the
shells. They moved out of the grove, headed towards the road at Sam s steady
walking pace. Ilf couldn t see the aircar and wondered why Auris didn t want
the man in the car to see them. He wriggled uncomfortably. It was a strange,
uneasy-making morning in every way.
They crossed the road, went swishing through high grass with Sam s ponderous
side-to-side sway like a big ship sailing over dry land, and came to the Queen
Grove. Sam moved on into the green-tinted shade under the Queen Trees. The air
grew cooler. Presently he turned to the right, and Ilf saw a flash of blue
ahead. That was the great thicket of flower bushes, in the center of which was
Sam s sleeping pit.
Sam pushed through the thicket, stopped when he reached the open space in the
center to let Ilf and Auris climb out of
the shell-cave. Sam then lowered his forelegs, one after the other, into the
pit, which was lined so solidly with tree roots that almost no earth showed
between them, shaped like a mold to fit the lower half of his body, tilted
forward, drawing neck and head back under his shell, slid slowly into the pit,
straightened out and settled down. The edge of his upper shell was now level
with the edge of the pit, and what still could be seen of him looked simply
like a big, moss-grown boulder.
If nobody came to disturb him, he might stay there unmoving the rest of the
year. There were mossbacks in other groves of the farm which had never come
out of their sleeping pits or given any indication of being awake since Ilf
could remember.
They lived an enormous length of time and a nap of half a dozen years
apparently meant nothing to them.
Ilf looked questioningly at Auris. She said, We ll go up to the house and
listen to what Uncle Kugus is talking about.
They turned into a path which led from Sam s place to the house. It had been
made by six generations of human children, all of whom had used Sam for
transportation about the diamondwood farm. He was half again as big as any
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other mossback around and the only one whose sleeping pit was in the Queen
Grove. Everything about the Queen Grove was special, from the trees
themselves, which were never cut and twice as thick and almost twice as tall
as the trees of other groves, to Sam and his blue flower thicket, the huge
stump of the Grandfather Slurp not far away, and the giant greenweb at the
other end of the grove. It was quieter here; there were fewer of the other
animals. The Queen Grove, from what
Riquol Cholm had told Ilf, was the point from which the whole diamondwood
forest had started a long time ago.
Auris said, We ll go around and come in from the back. They don t have to
know right away that we re here . . .
Mr. Terokaw, said Riquol Cholm, I m sorry Kugus Ovin persuaded you and Mr.
Bliman to accompany him to
Wrake on this business. You ve simply wasted your time. Kugus should have
known better. I ve discussed the situation quite thoroughly with him on other
occasions.
I m afraid I don t follow you, Mr. Cholm, Mr. Terokaw said stiffly. I m
making you a businesslike proposition in regard to this farm of diamondwood
trees a proposition which will be very much to your advantage as well as to
that of the children whose property the Diamondwood is. Certainly you should
at least be willing to listen to my terms!
Riquol shook his head. It was clear that he was angry with Kugus but
attempting to control his anger.
Your terms, whatever they may be, are not a factor in this, he said. The
maintenance of a diamondwood forest is not entirely a business proposition.
Let me explain that to you as Kugus should have done.
No doubt you re aware that there are less than forty such forests on the
world of Wrake and that attempts to grow the trees elsewhere have been
uniformly unsuccessful. That and the unique beauty of diamondwood products,
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